God is a Cube - Greenlight Alpha

This post is from the now defunct website “A GameDev Plays…”, copied here for posterity

God is a Cube recently hit Steam
Greenlight
and was quickly greenlit. The game deserves this success, there is
already an enjoyable alpha nicely showing off this promising programming
puzzler. The developer recently put out a call for Let’s Players, so I
decided to give it a go…

In God is a Cube the player controls a cube as it moves around a small
map in order to reach the exit. This control is not direct, instead the
player “programs” the cube by providing a set of instructions depicted
as icons. These icons include commands such as “move forward”, “turn
right” as well as a “if-then-else” branching system and conditional
modifiers. These icons are chained together and then the resulting
program run to make the cube do as you wish, or just as often, do
something not quite right. There are the standard controls: play the
program; stop the program; fast forward; and the very handy, step
through the program one instruction/icon at a time.

The game currently contains 50 puzzles, most which of introduce and
teach the concepts of the icon-based programs. After an hour I have
reached a bit over half way through and have rarely felt lost as to how
to progress. All the puzzles are just a matter of moving the cube around
static obstacles to the exit point - harder challenges are yet to
emerge. There are many hints provided on how to assemble the correct
program, from a “waifu” offering advice to the availability of icons and
the shape of the resulting program. I’m fairly confident that most
people could quickly learn and solve the puzzles on offer.

In its current state I would suggest the game is too easy and too slow
in ramping up the difficulty. Perhaps as a professional programmer I am
an unfair comparison, but there is little to puzzle me in this puzzle
game. However, this is still an alpha! There are expected to be rough
edges (literally in the case of the jagged graphics in the game). The
point is to test the core gameplay mechanism. Then work on extra
features, polish and balance as the proper release nears. On that basis,
God is a Cube is a great success. The core mechanic makes programming
fun and has potential for possible puzzles in the future. Given
statements and videos by the developer, I have confidence that if they
keep going the game will only get better and more challenging.

God is a Cube can be downloaded for free from
here. This review is for version 00_05_14_00
from 31st July 2016. While playing please provide feedback using the
in-game system (at the end of each level), this will help the developer
make a better game.